many of you know rob shapiro, who has a long history of policy leadership here in washington, starting in the early days working for daniel patrick moynihan, to helping advise bill clinton in 1992, and eventually becoming the undersecretary of commerce in the second clinton term. what brought us together is the subject we will talk about today. back in early-2005, when ndn was reborn as a think-tank from being a political organization, i started calling people, and i found something i could not explain. . do we have to have sound issues? ok. we began a collaboration that has gone on for eight years in a series of papers we had been writing. rob shapiro wrote a book during that time, taking a deep dive and what was happening with the globalization, that looked at the essential issue. we were looking at wages and why job growth was slowing down. one of the things we have come to believe as we try to make sense of the events. the question is, and it is what edward gets to in his book, are we facing a new set of economic circumstances that are fundamentally different than the ones we faced